in 13,455,691,221 Standard Year, scholar Okolim of Tripan lands on a primitive little world in order to catch a spectacular triple conjunction of the three center planets of the system with the constellation Parmenta. Unfortunately for the primitives, Okolim's Sforta plague, fairly harmless to his own people, spread from him to some fleas in the field he sat in, and devastated millions of the natives over the next few years.

in 1413, Pope Henry V, second in the Holy British Empire’s Lancastrian line of popes, dons the Shoes of the Fisherman at the death of his father, Pope Henry IV. Pope Henry V, while a miserable ruler in most ways, was a military genius, and recaptured many of the continental possessions lost by his weaker predecessors.

in 1778, when King Louis of France rejects the American rebel embassy, all hopes of American independence are lost. The Canadian nationalist movement receives a rush of people from their southern brethren as Americans who foresee the end of their own struggle move to a land that they hope will have freedom soon.

in 1854, the Communist Party of America is founded by former Whigs who have been influenced by The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Henry David Thoreau. They meet in Ripon, Wisconsin, and attract luminaries from across the nation, including Thoreau and their first presidential candidate, Walt Whitman.

in 1937, Spanish fascist leader Francisco Franco, who had briefly allied himself with the German Underground, severs his ties with them after driving the Greater Zionist Resistance from Spain. This enrages the G.U., especially after he signs a non-agression pact with the G.Z.R.

in 1965, President Goldwater refuses to send federal troops to protect civil-rights marchers in Alabama. The racist segregationist movement, emboldened by this withdrawal of federal responsibilities, attacks the marchers on their way from Selma to Montgomery, and the blood-bath that results is trumpeted across the nation as a failure of national will. The images of death and injury from this march, including the near-fatal shooting of the Reverend Martin Luther King, are credited with changing Goldwater's mind about civil rights.

in 1995, cult members of the Aum Shinrikyo release a huge amount of highly lethal sarin gas into the Tokyo subway hub at Kasumigaseki. They had been drilled for months as to how to disseminate the gas, and their efficient release, combined with their willingness to sacrifice themselves, resulted in the single worst terrorist attack in the world – almost 40,000 Japanese died, and tens of thousands more were permanently wounded. The backlash was felt against fringe religious movements all over the world as everyone tried to prevent a repeat of this horrific day.

in 1997, Egyptian and British troops liberate Tananarive, Madagascar, from South African occupational forces. With Fulcrum forces collapsing all over the world, both the United States and South Africa begin pulling their soldiers back to defense of their homelands. The leaders of both nations, Terreblanche in South Africa and Shephard in the U.S., vow that their nations will not fall to the foreign invaders.

in 2000, the Catacombs of Doom, Bill Burke’s first campaign for his group of dead gamers, the Gamers from Beyond, concludes after 17 straight hours. The group is satisfied with Burke as a gamemaster, and with Fudge as their game system. Burke and Hamid, the Turkish ghost from the 12th century who recruited him as a GM, then begin work on a grander adventure, a horror campaign they call the Bus Ride of Doom.

in 2004, both Livinia and Jacob Sheridan conclude that the Titanian methane crabs that they have been seeing are not, in fact, Titanian methane crabs. There is some sort of organism contained in the remains of the crabs from the Huygens that is making everyone see the crabs. The Sheridans then begin working on a way to kill these tiny organisms.

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